


Pulling Up Stakes

by lollard



Category: Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:40:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollard/pseuds/lollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Julian got Idgie to start over. (Book, not movie.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pulling Up Stakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivien/gifts).



After I-20 made its way over to Birmingham and the trains mostly stopped, so did Whistle Stop (pretty much), so Idgie and Julian took to the road, with their stuff in an old Airstream trailer and a promise to Stump and Peggy that they'd call at least once a week.

For a while Idgie threatened to paint the old trailer like a patent-medicine wagon, but Julian, who'd known Idgie since she was a little thing (and, more to the point, had watched Ruth manage Idgie for years), paid her no mind at all and just kept looking out at the two-lane blacktop ahead of them, and eventually Idgie gave it up.

"Where are we headed, anyhow?" Idgie finally asked, once she noticed that they were headed south. They were a little north of Wetumpka.

Julian lifted a hand to the man operating the boiled-peanut stand in front of the Philips 66, and said, "I hear Apalachicola's nice this time of year."

"Julian, I got your number," Idgie said, grinning.

"What number's that?"

"You want fresh oysters."

"Yep," Julian agreed.

"We're selling, not buying."

"That's so," Julian agreed.

"And Apalachicola isn't known for its scarcity of anything we got in the back."

"I'd say that's about accurate," Julian agreed.

"So what else is in Apalachicola?"

"Well," Julian said after a thoughtful moment, "there's an oysterman I met once, says he's got a little land and nobody on it, and I thought if we wanted to grow a little something we could sell it ourselves. And it's close to the beach, you drive a little."

"We know catfish." Ruth knew catfish, Idgie thought. "We don't know oysters."

"Then the folks down here that _do_ know catfish will come to us."

Wetumpka passed them by. Idgie watched it go.

"Well," she said finally, "is there a superhighway down there?"

"Too far south for one. I think I-10 is a couple hundred miles north."

"Who's going to look after the cemetery?"

"Naughty Bird's promised, long as we come back and visit them often."

"Are you going to complain if I get a beehive?"

"Would it do any good if I did?"

Idgie grinned, one of the wide ones that reminded Julian of when she was two or three. "We'll try it."

They stayed the night with Wilbur and Dot Weems on the bay before they went east along US 98, and they headed inland a little the night after, and Idgie talked a lot about building a store but Julian told her that they might as well start with a roadside stand, they weren't getting any younger, and he didn't know about her but he thought they ought to sell some cold drinks too, because maybe she hadn't noticed, but Apalachicola was pretty hot, and Idgie wanted to know what Julian had expected, the North Pole or something, and Julian let her talk until they hit Port St. Joe and stopped off to call Stump, and Eva too.


End file.
